Judith is a woman in exile, relegated to a Florida condo after her husband’s Wall Street crimes have expelled her from a luxurious life. Family ties are tested when her daughter Becca comes to visit for Thanksgiving, joined by Becca’s filmmaker boyfriend and rebellious niece. Guilt by association, lost wealth and questionable motives make trying to love your family an uncommonly difficult challenge in this funny, incisive and timely new drama.
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Production photos by Michael Brosilow.
REVIEW
The Commons of Pensacola homes in on shattered family
by Hedy Weiss
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
Some might describe The Commons of Pensacola — the tremendously accomplished first play written by actress Amanda Peet, now receiving a deliciously fierce Midwest premiere at Northlight Theatre — as a tale of survival. Others might call it a picture of the afterlife, or a study in collateral damage, guilt, denial and our uniquely 21st century form of tabloid narcissism. A few might even call it an American tragedy.
In fact, it is all these things, and more. Peet has managed to spin her story into an airtight 90 minutes full of memorable characters and painful truths. And director Robin Witt, who is enjoying a stellar year (The Commons follows on the heels of her extraordinary helming of Griffin Theatre’s Men Should Weep), has gathered a cast of six that is pure perfection …
As mother and daughter, [Linda] Kimbrough and [Lusia] Strus, veteran Chicago actresses who can flip from tragedy to comedy in a single breath, are a match made in heaven as two women imprisoned in a web of love, loss, fear and need. Their blistering mother-daughter firefight is a stunner.
PREVIEW
Bernie Madoff story inspired darkly comic Commons of Pensacola
by Catey Sullivan
PIONEER PRESS
…For director Robin Witt, the questions Commons asks are as significant as they are vexing: “What happens to a family that’s been destroyed from within? What happens when you’re so hated, when the things your husband or father has done are so heinous that you don’t even have the right to mourn his loss?”
As Judith, veteran Chicago actor Linda Kimbrough has a personal connection to Madoff and the ruinous schemes that cost people their homes, their retirement and even their health. “I have a relative who worked in Madoff’s office. She didn’t do anything wrong. Doesn’t know anything. But, you know, they’re still trying to find out what happened to all that money. Every year, she gets reinvestigated and polygraphed,” Kimbrough says.
Whether you have a tie to Madoff or not, The Commons of Pensacola tells a compelling story of a family struggling with crippling guilt and trying to mend relationships that seem irrevocably broken. Peet’s drama is set on Thanksgiving, as Ruth’s daughters Becca (Lusia Strus) and Ali (Lori Myers) arrive for a visit that unleashes the demons buried just below the surface at Judith’s new Florida home.
PREVIEW
50 shows for fall: The game’s just beginning
by Kerry Reid
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
HEAVY HITTERS
The Commons of Pensacola: With the recent death of Bernie Madoff’s last surviving son, Andrew, Amanda Peet’s play about the wife of a Madoff-like figure coming to terms with her husband’s crimes may have extra poignancy. Robin Witt directs the local premiere. Northlight Theatre, Skokie; Sept. 12-Oct. 19
PREVIEW
Theater for fall 2014: Looking local, Airline Highway to Native Son
by Chris Jones
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
The Commons of Pensacola: One persistent critique of the American theater is that writers are too slow to react to current events. This is why we’ve seen such a rise in the prestige and currency of television. But you could not apply that charge to the new play at the Northlight Theatre, written by the actress Amanda Peet. For legal and, perchance, aesthetic reasons, the names have been changed. But The Commons of Pensacola, which has not been seen before in Chicago, is about the fallout from the Bernie Madoff scandal. Peet wisely does not focus on the man himself, or on some stand-in for the convicted trickster. Instead, her play (seen and acclaimed in New York) focuses on the members of his family, who must come to terms both with the scale of the crime committed on their watch and with the total upheaval of their lives. Robin Witt, fresh from her recent triumph with Men Should Weep at the Griffin Theatre is at the helm. Sept. 12 to Oct. 19 at Northlight Theatre, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie; $25-$78 at 847-673-6300 and northlight.org